I've been unable to persuade my almost 87-year-old mother to consider a CCRC. And there's a great CCR about a mile from her house.

I believe that there is an age beyond which seniors/elderly simply can't pull the trigger and make a decision to leave their home for a retirment community of any type. The age isn't a fixed age, but I think the range is somewhere between 75 and 80. In other words, if they don't make a move prior to that age, they are likely to fight tooth and nail to stay in their home until they are taken to the hospital to die or die in bed. The fact that their decision makes a total mess of the lives of their children and grandchilder doesn't matter after they pass the point of no return. Of course, there are many exceptions to this rule, but I think it's a decent rule of thumb, at least based on what I've seen and experienced over my life. This is why I think people (in this case, me and my wife) need to make arrangements and execute on those arrangements prior to 75. My wife is like her mother, who is currently being dragged by her two daughters (my wife and her sister) out of her house and into a retirement home at age 87. She can no longer live alone, and she knows it. Her solution is for one of her daughters to come and stay with her for long weekends every weekend, and for them to take care of everything. She doesn't care what this means in terms of time and expense, since both daughters live a plane flight and rental car distance from her home. I'm unlikely to make it to 75, but my wife is likely to make it far into her 90s or even beyond 100. We have only one son, who won't be able to provide any financial support for her, nor will he be in a position to spend a lot of time looking after her. In addition, my wife absolutely abhors the idea of taking advice or instructions of any kind from our son. Bottom line: We need to plan for the future and execute on that plan at an appropriate time, which would be while I'm still on this side of the ground. This is what motivates me to look at CCRCs. I don't know what we'll do, but I know we need to do something at some point in time.

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